


Keep Me Alive

by somuchforbaggles



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Castiel, Purgatory, Rugaru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 06:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3125114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somuchforbaggles/pseuds/somuchforbaggles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Castiel are light bulbs in a forest of moths. They're meant to keep themselves on the dimmest setting whilst they travel to Purgatory's portal, but when Castiel finds Dean and Benny ambushed by a rugaru with revenge on her mind, all thoughts of his angelic off-switch are replaced with one other: <i>Protect Dean.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Me Alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wisepuma23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisepuma23/gifts).



> For the prompt: Dean gets hurt badly and Cas goes full angel mode (glowing eyes and Holy Wrath + wings) hurt/comfort.
> 
> I hope this was alright! This fic was sort of a side step from what I usually write, and paired with the fact that it was written while I was getting out of my writer's block, I'm a little apprehensive. So I do hope you like it :)

In Castiel’s experience, listening to Dean Winchester's orders was sometimes rather akin to rummaging blindfolded in a bag full of knives and hoping for feathers. Either the force of Dean’s will imagined a feather out of it, or the force of the blades shredded the hand.

This was one of the latter occasions.

 _Stow it and make yourself useful and scope out a place to sleep tonight,_ Dean had commanded, seething with the repressed rage of a long-suffering mother after his pet vampire and Castiel bickered once more.

He kept Benny by his side, however, and Castiel wondered whether Dean was finally punishing him. God knew Castiel was punishing himself, what with his plan to abandon Dean at the portal and atone for his sins in the purity of Purgatory. The most painful flagellation would be seeing Dean’s face when he realised, but it would be the one Castiel deserved and needed most.

Castiel found a secluded cavern within no time, and made the journey back towards where Dean and Benny were headed.

They were not alone.

The vampire’s body lay unconscious in the clearing, the leaves surrounding him autumn-red again from his blood, and upon seeing Dean, Castiel’s blade fell from his sleeve so quickly he almost didn’t catch it.

“She came outta nowhere…” Dean breathed, clutching his side whilst failing to drag himself up.

Castiel’s eyes darted around for the ‘she’ Dean was speaking of, but they kept returning to the cuts on Dean’s features and the chunk taken out of his leg. Just one touch could heal his wounds on Earth but Castiel’s powers were depleted in Purgatory; a disciplinary from God for being there.

“Cas!”

Dean’s voice was weak, but his swollen gaze was strong. Castiel whipped around to see a hunched woman with lank blonde hair and cavernous eyes. He sniffed the air. Rotting teeth, the vague trace of souls on her heaved breath, a cannibalistic craving seeping out of her wormy pores; everything about her stank of _rugaru._ Her eyes were black from the recent feed of Dean’s calf, and her bones shifted under her skin as a sneer formed over her snarl.

“ _You. You’re_ the angel my companion was killed to find,” she growled.

The lengths Dean went to to retrieve Castiel were none other than astounding, Castiel belatedly realised. Benny had hinted at the things Dean had done, but Castiel always stayed silent on the subject. He didn’t like _watching_ Dean torture and kill, let alone imagine him doing it just to find his angel – because Castiel’s was Dean’s angel, just like Dean was Castiel’s human. They’d just fallen into it, as gradually as Castiel was falling from Heaven; only Castiel wouldn’t firmly deny the first as he would the second.

In the split second that all sprinted through Castiel’s mind, the rugaru scrambled across the clearing. With every generation the species grew stronger and faster, something he should have been remembering instead of contemplating the belonging of humans and angels.

She knocked him down with a heavy handed punch, her black eyes a storm, and Castiel’s blade thudded to the ground out of reach. Another punch, another way God punished him for his weaknesses. One more punch, one more reason for Castiel to stay down.

“I was planning to kill you and the other one, so he would know how it feels,” the rugaru hissed close to Castiel’s would-be bruising face, spitting bloody saliva, “but I think I shall kill him instead. I have gone too long lonely to go about revenge the wrong way.”

A dirty sputter of a laugh left her mouth as she caught Castiel off-guard not only with her threat, but with another hit. She ran her curling claws down her face, almost as a parting gift, before sitting back on her haunches to finish her vengeance.

However, there were other plans in motion.

“Castiel…” a voice called, barely audible to anyone but its intended, “you’re an angel, you ass. _Fight._ ”

That voice shone a light on something Castiel thought long gone with taking on Sam’s wall. He would be a beacon, but saving Dean now, in the present, was more important that the future would ever be – especially if that future was missing Dean Winchester. Castiel’s strength rose from the ashes, the phoenix feeding his fury with fire. He threw the rugaru off him, his eyes glowing like the sun hiding behind clouds, and she landed with a _thud_ on the carpet of dead foliage.

She would feed no more, Castiel decided.

He stood and moved with a flutter of a bee’s wing to where Dean lay, his blade in his hand again and his will to live, not just to survive, stronger than ever.

“Is that everything you have? Your summer eyes? The mutters of monsters were right; you are _weak._ ” The rugaru snickered despite her surface injuries, and her knees and back swayed like those of a dancer stretching as she picked herself back up.

Dean’s croak was a welcomed surprise, one that expelled relief from Castiel’s lungs.

“Cut the crap, Shakespeare.”

That was Castiel’s cue. He puffed his chest up, not so much like a peacock but like a pigeon, and bore his _summer eyes_ into her winter ones. Even under the dampening curse of the canopy that once hung above Eden, the shadow of Castiel’s wings shifted into perception and charred their reflection into the trees behind. Droplets of black blood rose on the rugaru’s cracked lips as her mouth fell open, something she would never suffer from again after today.

She didn’t bother running away or attempting to fight back. It was fruitless, especially against a wrathful angel whose human she had beaten and promised to kill. She accepted her fate, her hope as black as her lips, eyes, and soul.

Castiel was clinical with the smiting. It was quick and easy, but by no means painless. He placed his hand on her head and let his grace burn her from the inside out. She dropped to the floor, smoke pouring from her eye sockets, now black for an entirely different reason, and Castiel felt no joy in it. Dean was safe (as safe as one could be in Purgatory, anyway), and that was all that mattered.

With just about enough energy left to awaken Benny, he informed the vampire of the situation and the location of the cave he found previously. They carried the unconscious Dean between them, and whenever Castiel fell, Benny pulled him back up. When they made it, Dean was no more harmed than when they left, quite the accomplishment for the amount of times his lower half collapsed with Castiel, and Castiel celebrated by sleeping with a protective arm curled around his human.

* * *

Benny had a fire going by the time Castiel awoke, as well as unidentified meat cooking over it. Castiel’s nose chose not to recognise what it was by scent alone, and his mouth had no designs to ask.

He rolled over to check on Dean, who was still asleep. By the looks of his lax features, it wasn’t the troubled sleep Castiel had become accustomed to observing, but it certainly didn’t look pleasant. There was blood and soil caked in his stubble and in the creases Dean pretended weren’t there, and purpling bruises blooming over the yellowed ones he already had. It was as if the bunch of buttercups had been snatched away from Dean’s face and replaced with a bouquet of irises, and Castiel wouldn’t have been surprised if the case was the same for his body. Dean’s expression shifted a millimetre into one of immense discomfort (it was easier to think that than to think Dean was in pain) every so often, but Castiel’s healing hands dropped their adjective and could only hold Dean’s cheeks. Frustration wouldn’t have swept over Castiel, but having Dean near kept him afloat, as it always had.

“He’ll be right as rain in a coupl’a days,” Benny drawled, poking the meat with a stick.

“I know.”

Usually Castiel could cure any ill in a second. Usually hopelessness was foreign to him. Usually he was someone in Dean’s life who could offer something. Here, in Purgatory, he offered nothing. He was a beacon. He drew attention to them. He slowed them down. Why Dean wanted him around was a mystery, even with all the prayers acting as puzzle pieces.

 _‘I need you’_ to help fight off the gorilla-wolves, Castiel finished.

 _‘I’ll find you’_ so you can heal our wounds, he guessed.

 _‘I miss you, man’_ was a little harder to spin.

 _‘Are you even here still?’_ was one of the most difficult prayers not to answer.

Castiel sat up and turned towards the fire. Feeling the heat dance on his face and hearing the flames crackle was more preferable to hearing the prayers parade around his head and feeling nothing but deserved guilt. He chastised himself from avoiding one of his punishments, but did not turn back to face Dean and the failures that hung between them.

After a few minutes, Benny attempted to bond.

“So... How did the two of you meet?”

“I gripped him right and raised him from Perdition. And then he stabbed me.”

Benny chuckled. “Sounds about right.” He thought for a moment, because apparently vampires could think about something other than blood, and said, “Seems like you’ve come a long way since then, brother.”

“I still bear no relation to you,” Castiel muttered.

“Not even after I hauled your angelic ass up every time you tripped on the way?” Benny sniffed in mock-offence.

Castiel despised that it wasn’t just the fire that was helping him warm to the vampire. In the back of his mind was the reminder that the taste in blood maketh not the man, as showcased with Sam, but there was also the hint that perhaps Benny being a vampire wasn’t why he wasn’t fond of him. Being here was about purging himself of his sins, and covetousness should have been his first.

“We have come a long way,” he replied, with ample time between his remark and when the comment was made.

A tug on his trench coat agreed with him.

Castiel peered over his shoulder to see if Dean was awake, but it was just his hand seeking comfort in one of the only ways it knew how.

Wearing the trench coat was like wrapping himself in all the times Dean took it out of the Impala’s trunk just to touch it with delicate, calloused fingertips, and all the times Dean kept it under his pillow and slept with his hands fisted in the material, and all the sparse times Dean laid it over himself like a blanket. With that in mind, Castiel shucked off the coat and laid it over Dean. Dean’s warmth and comfort was far more important than his own, and maybe the trench coat would do some healing where it’s renter couldn’t.

Though, Castiel thought, he wasn’t so much renting it anymore. He hadn’t been for a long time. He’d been bequeathed it, and now it wasn’t Jimmy’s coat on Jimmy’s body, but his.

He avoided Benny’s pointed stare, and mumbled something about how being in close proximity to an angel speeded the healing process.

* * *

Benny had left the cave in search for firewood, leaving Castiel to poke at the embers whilst keeping an eye on Dean. A gust of wind brought a few dead leaves in, so he added those to the fire, careful not to smother the remnants of what they had, and pondered leaves in comparison to himself.

Once in their lifetime, leaves rebel from their branches and fall just to kiss the ground. It was nature’s way, and Castiel never particularly questioned it, not even in his insanity. Perhaps in a point of his existence before he fought his way through Hell, before humans were anything more than a collective group he loved more than his Father by default, Castiel would have wondered if the ground was worth it; if the grass, so small and great in their numbers, were worthy of the fallen.

Spending more time amongst them, and with the Winchesters, Castiel had come to realise that being a blade of grass was far preferable than being a leaf. Grass withstood most; it was resilient. It welcomed the dew, shook off the snow, shied in the summer, and befriended the leaves in the autumn.

The idea of Dean being like the grass was befitting. His eyes shone like morning in a meadow, and he befriended Castiel from afar even before he rebelled. For if Dean was the grass, then Castiel was a leaf – wandering in the wind, curling at the edges, and burnt from his fall. Dean might grumble through gales when Castiel drifted from him, but Castiel would always return, wind or no wind to carry him.

A voice roused him from his introspection.

“What’cha thinkin’ ‘bout?”

Castiel smiled. It felt like he hadn’t heard that voice in an entire season.

“Leaves.” _And you and me,_ he left out.

“Dork. ‘s this your coat?” Dean asked, frowning at the tan material swaddling him.

Castiel nodded.

Dean nodded back. “Mmkay.”

He then promptly fell back to sleep.

Dean was going to be fine.

But there was no harm in Castiel helping him there quicker.

He moved around the fire pit to where Dean was, and shared a secret smile with burning leaves when a warm body curved around his. This was...nice. Castiel had heard that humans were told to stray away from using ‘nice’ in their sentences, but it was apt in the situation, and he wasn’t a human. Not yet, anyway.

Benny chose that moment to arrive, his arms full of twigs and broken branches. He eyebrows arched when he saw them, but Castiel did not avert his gaze. He looked Benny straight in the eyes and said, “He woke up while you were gone.”

“Good. Can’t have him dyin’ on us, not when he’s my ride out of here.” Benny plonked the wood down in a pile in a hidey-hole.

Castiel scowled and open his mouth to snap at him, but Benny held his hands up in surrender and said, “Relax, Hot Wings. I was jus’ messin’.”

He better have been. Dean’s life meant more than letting a monster loose from Monster Heaven, and Castiel planned to make that known with as many sharp stares as possible.

As Benny chose a few sticks to add to the miniature fire, Castiel spread his hands over it. In just hospital scrubs, it was chilly, especially in a cave thats walls were wet. He never let surface temperature bother him before, but now he was repenting. Feeling freezing would be like emulating ten Hail Marys.

His hands hovered over the flames that Benny coaxed for a long, quiet while. Dean’s snuffling was the only noise bar the wind whispering through the trees outside and the fire snapping the twigs, and they all came together in an orchestra of sorts. It was a white noise Castiel welcomed.

“Brother,” Benny said in a low voice, “maybe you should take a leaf outta Dean here’s book and rest up. Try ‘n’ heal those nasty claw marks ya got.” When Castiel didn’t take the hint, he added, “I hear body heat’s a wonderful thing.”

Good. Benny had only _heard_ of that. Castiel’s gut churned at the idea of Dean sharing his precious body heat with a cold-blooded reptile of a man.

Still, there was no harm in listening to him for once, especially when Castiel’s eyelids were drooping like leprechauns had mistaken his lashes for the pulls to blackout blinds.

He lied down next to Dean and draped the arm of his trenchcoat over his body. It would do for now, before Dean’s presence warmed his skin in place of the fire. Castiel didn’t have to wait for long, however, because Dean rolled over and set his head on Castiel’s shoulder, as well as sharing the coat between them.

The vampire’s ears heard correctly. Body heat truly was a wonderful thing.  

* * *

Dean was awake by the time Castiel was too, and by the way his green eyes darted across the cave as quickly as an actual dart, he was watching over the sleeping angel. He still had Castiel’s coat draped over him.

Instead of lingering on that fact (because it warmed Castiel to the tips of his fingers and he had no idea why), Castiel took a long look at Dean’s face. For medical reasons. Probably. The bruises on his face were yellowing at the edges (which was a promising sign), the skin around his eyes (though pinker than the rest of him) had ceased its swelling, and most importantly, Dean’s stubble had grown into a short beard.

Dean graced Castiel with a startled stare. “What? I look that bad?”

“Not at all,” Castiel said both quickly and slowly. “I’ve just...never seen you with a beard before.”

Scratching his chin and wincing when he came across a cut, Dean chanced a small grin. “Does it look good?”

Castiel took advantage of the question to examine Dean’s features further. Dean turned his head this way and that, clicking his neck as he went, and rubbing against the grain of his beard with a knuckle. When Castiel was quite done pretending to mull over the question, his answer was simple.

“Yes.”

A rather pink expression appeared on Dean’s face, one that came grouped with a small, shy shrug, and wiggling fingers. It lasted only a few seconds, only to be replaced by a look that featured the breed of eyebrows Castiel associated with sympathetic priests, thin lips, and beseeching eyes.

“Aww, man. I was kinda hopin’ you’d say no,” Dean mumbled.

“Why?” asked Castiel, puzzled.

“So it’d be easier for you to shave it.”

“You want me to shave it?”

“Yeah, shave it.”

The lines above Castiel’s nose deepened. “I have no experience in barbers’ techniques.”

“My hands are too shaky, Cas. I’d cut myself.” Dean held his hands in Castiel’s face to prove it, and sure enough, just in front of an embarrassed-yet-angry face, Dean’s hands wobbled under just the air pressure.

After a moment, Castiel carefully batted Dean’s hands away and quietly questioned, “What if I cut you?”

“You won’t! Jeez, if it’s that big a deal, I’ll ask Benny.”

“ _No._ ” It was too quick a response, one that had Dean backing away an inch or so. It was so instinctive that Castiel startled himself, so he repressed the part of his grace that thought it was okay to speak without consulting all four heads first and elaborated, “Don’t do that. _He_ might cut you and then—”

“What? Drain me dry?” Dean raised a skeptical eyebrow. “He’s not gonna do that. Give him some credit. I’ve bled plenty around him and he hasn’t even blinked an eye, so cool it with the jealous boyfriend act.”

Everything went silent, even the zombie-birds, and even the whispering trees.

Everyone but them had referred to them as boyfriends. Always everyone else, never them. _Always._ Dean had broken the mould. Not that he ever really fit in, but—

_Boyfriends._

It meant nothing to Castiel.

Noticing that it meant nothing at all (seriously, nothing) to Castiel, Dean gulped, a sure-fire way to know that it also meant absolutely nothing to Dean too. When they were both quite clear that being boyfriends meant nothing to either of them, Castiel coughed, and artfully changed the subject in a way he’d seen only Sam do in the past.

“We should clean your calf.”

* * *

There was a lake hidden by firs a little walk away, something Castiel only knew because of his meandering travels along the stuttered rivers of Purgatory. It was one of the few without monsters lurking in its depths, and that was all the convincing Dean needed. Dean leaned on him as they made the short journey, and mumbled something about ‘bridal style’ more than once, but Castiel didn’t press. It was most likely mumbled for a reason.

They soaked their clothes first. It wasn’t imperative to Castiel, but Dean insisted. Apparently there was only one way he liked to be dirty, which was said paired with a smug chuckle. They knelt at the lip of the lake, wringing coats and shirts in the pure waters, clad only in pants. Castiel stripped himself of his and added them to the drowned arms reaching for the surface.

“Woah, woah, dude!”

Castiel looked round at Dean, whose face underwent the identical colours to the life cycle of a tomato.

“Warn me before you go all nudist!”

“Oh.” Castiel glanced down at his genitals, which were swinging in glee since they were set free. “You should take off your underwear too,” he said plainly, for reasons of cleanliness.

Dean gave a tiny shake of his head as he managed to stammer a scoff. “Y-Yeah, _obviously_ I will, just later, when we’re in the water.”

Still, he took off his jeans, and swirled them around in the lake.

To avoid Dean avoiding Castiel’s gaze, Castiel slipped into the teeth-chatteringly cold water and began cleaning the mess that was Dean’s leg. The clumsy bite had left streams of red running all the way down to his toes, so Castiel started there. He warmed the water a little so it wouldn’t send Dean into shock, but was more than a little shocked himself when his hands were slapped away.

“I can do that myself,” Dean thundered.

Castiel gave him a long, hard look. “But you don’t have to. You think because you can do something, you should do something, but that is not always the case. You should let people help you more often. Then perhaps you wouldn’t be as quick to anger as you are.”

“I’m not quick to anger!” protested Dean, loud and aggressive enough for a whole flock of zombie-birds to fly their nests. Then, quieter and more even, he said, “Alright, point taken. You can wash my feet or whatever. Do whatever Jesus-y things you need to do. ‘Cause maybe if you weren’t such a damn _martyr,_ you wouldn’t die so much. Or leave all the time.”

Castiel decided against telling him about how the use of the word ‘feet’ in the bible was often a euphemism, for the sake of eliciting an eye roll, and stayed silent on the other subject.

The quietest Castiel had ever heard him talk, Dean said, “You’re not gonna leave again, right?”

Picking the blood out of Dean’s leg hair, Castiel shook his head. It seemed to be enough because Dean did not continue down the path of lies Castiel would have to pave, instead readying his knife (if such a bastardisation could be called a knife) for the shave.

When it was clean, Castiel sealed the bite on Dean’s calf with the tie of his trench coat, and asked, “Would you like to bathe first and then have me shave you, or have me shave you and then bathe?”

“Shave first. Just get it off me.”

He handed Castiel the knife and turned his cheek. Castiel supposed it was a hint to the starting point, and took Dean’s jaw in his palm. Dean closed his eyes and melted into the contact, something Castiel had seen him do before, but he put it down to the fact that he was still naked rather than Dean relishing the feel of someone else’s body.

Castiel angled the large blade and eased the tip down the middle of Dean’s cheek. No blood dotted at the smooth surface, and Castiel considered it a win. He continued scraping the beard off, maneuvering the difficult skin like Dean’s upper lip and under Dean’s chin, and when it was just Dean’s throat left, he paused. He had a blade about to press into his best friend’s jugular, and if he failed to shave it properly, Dean could end up dead.

Dean opened an eye. “You okay?”

“Why are you so averse to your facial hair?” It was a good cover, Castiel thought.

Dean opened his other eye and lowered his face to look at Castiel. The bravery he usually only showed in battle shone through his words, something Castiel almost wished Sam were here to see, when he admitted, “My dad used to, uh, _sport_ this kinda beard. He’d come back from hunts with it, after he’d left us for days.”

Oh. Castiel understood now.

“You’re a better man than he was, Dean.”

Closing his eyes for just a second too long, Dean shook his head. “Dad didn’t break in Hell.”

“Because God didn’t intend for him to be the Righteous Man,” Castiel jumped in with. “”It was always you, Dean, it has always been you. You bettered everyone, even Michael and Lucifer. You better your father, even with the same facial hair.”

Dean gave a weak snort, but did not nod, shake his head, speak, or give any indication that he believed or disbelieved Castiel. He gestured to his adam’s apple, and Castiel finished the job with the utmost precision. He was a master tactician, and he used all of his training to make sure he didn’t spill his asset’s blood.

Once the mission was complete, Dean splashed his face with water and dived in. When Dean’s underwear was thrown to the rocks, that’s when Castiel got in too.

They swam. They rubbed their skin with pebbles. They (well, Dean) splashed around. They forgot they were in a land of monsters for a few minutes, and nothing reminded them.

Seeing that Dean was struggling to tread water, Castiel pulled a log over for them to float on. He kept a hold of one of Dean’s arms in case he slipped off, and Dean didn’t protest. The last time Castiel had felt any part of Dean’s naked body was when he pulled him out of Hell. He glanced across at Dean and must have unwittingly conveyed this to Dean, because Dean nodded and pulled away ever so slightly, so it was his wrist Castiel was holding. Under the water, their legs tangled together, and Castiel told himself it was a backup for the _keep.dean.afloat_ file.

 _The Winchesters would be proud of that analogy,_ he then thought to himself with a smile.

But he wasn’t meant to smile. He wasn’t meant to feel joy at all, not while he was repenting, and certainly when he was going to betray them yet again. He fought the curve on his face until it became nothing more than a straight line, because there was no room for anything but order in Heaven, and if Heaven were full of curves, there would be no order. Curves were never the same. They had different formulas and equations, they were rational and transcendental and fractal, and they could never measure up to the superiority of straight lines.

“What’s on your mind, Cas?”

He found Dean staring at him, the cuts on his face more prominent without the blood masking them, his lips pouting with curiosity. Dean looked younger without the troubles of the Earth on his skin. He looked pure. Too pure to dirty with Castiel’s sins.

“Lines and curves.” It was an art, what Castiel did. He told the truth, but he withheld the meaning behind it. But he had ample reason to.

Dean nodded, somewhat amused by the answer. The log dipped, but their legs kept them together whilst their chins were wetted. Dean wiped the water over the rest of his face with pruney fingers before flicking the remaining droplets in Castiel’s face, which brought about the memory of the rugaru’s spit. It wasn’t a pleasant memory in the least, and it must have shown on his face, because Dean laughed. It wasn’t an unkind laugh, more one of camaraderie.

“It’s just water, Cas, relax. You can flick me back to make it even if you want." When Castiel made no move, Dean's face dropped. "Oh shit, this isn’t about the water, is it?”

Castiel shook his head, unable to meet Dean’s eyes. “The rugaru spat in my face. The one who almost killed you.”

“But she didn’t. You saved me.”

“I almost didn’t.” Castiel’s guilty gaze met Dean’s confused one. “I almost couldn’t get up. She threatened Benny and I, and I didn’t have the heart to stop her. Then she threatened your life, and I heard a voice. It told me to fight. It sounded like you, but… I don’t know. I think – Never mind.” With a bout of courage he’d never had before, Castiel admitted in a low voice, “Sometimes, I think you and Him are one and the same.”

Dean’s jaw made a _thunk_ as it hit wood. “Cas… Did you just compare me to _God?”_

“No. Yes.”

He expected Dean to go on a rant about how he wasn’t worthy, about how he was nothing, about how he wasn’t divine enough to be anything close to a God, but in a turn of events more surprising than Jesus’s resurrection, what Dean said next surpassed all expectations.

“Maybe it was you,” he said.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Maybe your inner voice or whatever said it to you in a different voice, and you listened ‘cause it wasn’t you talking.”

Before Castiel had the chance to answer, Dean untangled their legs and kicked with his good leg back to the shore. Castiel added the strength of his legs, but did not have the strength to reply. He had just enough energy to dry them both and their clothes with a touch, and they got dressed back to back. There was something hollow about it, like they’d stolen the inside of the first log Castiel had found before it sank, before he found the log they’d been hanging on to.

Dean leaned into Castiel, using him as a crutch again, and they walked back to the cave in silence. They couldn’t draw attention to themselves as beacons, couldn’t have anything finding their location, and that was the only reason they didn’t speak.

However, a few feet away from the entrance to the cave, Dean stopped.

Glancing at Dean in concern to find a cause for it, Castiel started to ask, “Is everything al—”

“I just want you to know that I made a promise, and I’m keepin’ it,” Dean interrupted. “I don’t know what you’re planning, but whatever it is, I’m not leavin’ here without you. Got it?”

Castiel nodded his lie, but according to the frown on Dean’s features it wasn’t good enough. He opened his mouth to lie, but it was stoppered with Dean’s before the words left.

It was quick and dry and wet and lasted forever all at the same time, and it was the purest Castiel had felt since rescuing Dean from the rack.

“I’m not leavin’ here without you,” Dean repeated on his lips.

Castiel nodded again, but this time it held nothing but verity. All his sins had been atoned for in one kiss from Dean Winchester, Righteous Man and Michael’s Sword.

Perhaps Purgatory was pure after all.

 


End file.
